As nations, the United States and Switzerland differ greatly in age, size, population and in their respective roles on the world stage, yet they enjoy historically close ties, common interests, shared traditions and remarkable political similarities as federal unions of independent states with representative democracies. The Sister Republics revives a like-named exhibition conceived in 1991 by Dr. James H. Hutson of the Library of Congress to mark the septicentennial of the Swiss Confederation. Since then, a touring version of the exhibition has appeared in many cities in the U.S. and in Switzerland.